Animation Events in PowerPoint 2010 for Windows

Once you add an animation to any slide object, you can play the animation in Slide Show view by clicking your mouse cursor or pressing the spacebar on your keyboard. Another option is to use a button on a presentation remote -- each of these options advances one animation at a time, or may even take you to the subsequent slide. While this approach works for slides that have an animation or two, you will quickly realize that this is certainly not the way to go if your slides have tens of animations, or more. If you add that many animations to any slide, you probably want your animations to be automatically sequenced -- that's exactly where PowerPoint's animation events can help. PowerPoint supports three types of animation events:

1. On Click: This is the default animation event for any animation applied to a slide object. This animation can be played by either clicking the left (or default) mouse button, pressing the spacebar or Next Arrow button on the keyboard, or activating a specific button on a presentation remote control.
2. With Previous: This animation event is set to play simultaneously with any previous animation(s) listed on the Animation pane for the same slide. If there are no previous animations on the slide, this animation plays immediately after the slide transition.
3. After Previous: This animation event plays instantly after a previous animation finishes playing on a slide. If there are no previous animations on the slide, this animation plays immediately after the slide transition.

Follow these steps to change the animation event for any animation:

1. Select the slide object that has an animation applied. Refer to our Adding an Animation in PowerPoint 2010 tutorial.
2. With the slide object still selected, access the Animations tab of the Ribbon, and locate the Start box, as shown highlighted in red in Figure 1.
   
   
   Figure 1: Start box within the Animations tab
3. Now, click the down arrow next to the Start box to open the Animation Events drop-down list as shown in Figure 2.
   
   
   Figure 2: Animation events drop-down list
4. Choose any animation event based on your requirement for the selected animation.
5. Save your presentation.

See Also:

Animation Events in PowerPoint 2016 for Windows
Animation Events in PowerPoint 2013 for Windows
Animation Events in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac
Animation Events in PowerPoint 2007, 2003, and 2002 for Windows